Comment & Analysis
And of course the conundrum of whether we would actually have enough of the right sort of Velcro to attach the display panels to our shell scheme… Who knew you could go so very wrong when ordering Velcro?
Life, and projects, are all about learning. And I have learnt a lot about Velcro in the last few weeks, in the run up to what is ostensibly the UK’s most prestigious and unequivocally exciting low carbon vehicle show – Cenex LCV2016.
Moving on from adhesive materials, my experience at LCV this year was like no other. I had the great fortune to again meet up with Robert Llewellyn of Red Dwarf and Fully Charged fame. Robert is a huge advocate of electric vehicles, having been an early adopter of the Nissan LEAF, and now driver of the one that begins with 'T' and ends in 'esla'. We ‘did’ a Fully Charged episode on our previous electric vehicle demand control trial project, My Electric Avenue, a Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks LCN Fund project, delivered by EA Technology. The My Electric Avenue project found that across Britain 32% of electricity supply cables (312,000 in all) will require intervention when 40% – 70% of customers have EVs. Intervention using smart technology, rather than digging up the roads to install new cables, has been predicted to give an economic saving of around £2.2 billion by 2050.
Robert interviewed myself and a range of Electric Nation project partners, automotive industry and Government types for this new Fully Charged film. I should mention that Electric Nation is the customer-facing brand of CarConnect, a Western Power Distribution (WPD) and Network Innovation Allowance funded project. WPD’s collaboration partners in the project are EA Technology, DriveElectric, Lucy Electric Gridkey and TRL. The really exciting thing about Electric Nation is that it has a real community feel, and is set to be the largest EV trial in the world– we’re seeking to recruit between 500-700 people buying or leasing new electric vehicles (including pure electric and plug-in hybrids). Even more exciting is that trial participants will get a free* smart charger installed.
This brings me on to a valuable learning point – sometimes an * with reference to ‘subject to eligibility and conditions’ is simply not enough. I’d say that the launch of Electric Nation at LCV was a great success; the presentation was well received, we had plenty of footfall to our stand, and social media activity around the project was pretty good. However, I come back to that *. The smart charger is free as long as the prospective trial participant has not already been in receipt of the OLEV grant under the Homecharge Scheme. The Electric Nation project can fund the difference, however if you’ve had a grant before, you’ll need to pay the grant equivalent for the smart charger.
Notwithstanding the *, the findings of the trial will help electricity network operators manage the effect of the additional load caused by charging EVs on the local electricity network whilst allowing electric vehicle numbers to grow. With forecasts still telling us that we’re set to see around a million EVs on UK roads by 2020, Electric Nation’s community of trial participants will be helping to future-proof Britain’s electricity networks to facilitate the continued uptake of EVs. Take a peek at the Electric Nation website to find out more, and if you live in the South West, South Wales, West or East Midlands, see if you could join the Electric Nation community.
Twitter: @electricnation_
gill.nowell@eatechnology.com
The views of the writer do not necessarily represent the views of the Institution.